Being so committed to private school but with zero saved for college is so unfathomable to me. But it makes sense that they talk about private school’s community and culture more than the school’s education. They’re paying for a certain kind of parenting lifestyle, and once the kids are out of the house the parents are no longer involved/invited to what happens at college.
I think they lost me when they said public school teaches things they don’t believe in, too.
This is really the truth. He straight up says it sometimes with “I think you want to come here and have me wave a magic wand”, these folks wanted a magic wand.
It does help me to think about where we are rigid in ways that aren’t serving us. It is easy to see where other people are being rigid and it is harming them but it is really difficult to find that in my own life.
I will eternally struggle with this one question: what is the difference between an excuse and an explanation. This couple has a ton of excuses that they think are explanations. My actual answer to this is an explanation is a reason that something happened, and excuse is when I let that same reason impact future choices.
You can totally have a big shabbat meal without spending $500 every week. If you want an organic kosher chicken, why not have that as the centerpiece? You say you dont waste food, but where does the rest of that meal go? There is no way your family is eating all of that food in one meal. I love the shabbat meal game, that would be so fun!
The fear of losing community is so real. My gay cousin’s husband’s parents are pastors and their fear of losing community over choosing their son is insane to me. They chose their community and not their son. I know it is a different example but there are very real consequences of choosing to be a part of a community, and when you try and choose different things it can lead to other hard consequences. Being exiled is one of the worst things to experience, even if the “in group” is wrong. Really taking a close look at the joneses you are trying to keep up with is an important task, even though it is hard.
I kind of understand this. They make more than enough money to cash flow their private school tuition and cash flowing college tuition would just be a continuation of the tuition payments 
Granted they aren’t making the trade offs they should to appropriately do it, but they totally could.
I think they feel the private schools are important because of the religion angle. I don’t think they trust the public schools to align with their view of religion.
I am a big believer in public schools, but I know my parents sent me to a religious high school because I think they were afraid of what secular public high school would do to me. Surprise, surprise, I did the religious high school and I still reject so many of the “values” it was supposed to teach me.
As far as this couple, I would be seriously considering homeschooling if I were them and so committed to not sending kids to public school. And I had quite the ick reaction to the entire mold situation and am super suspicious of everything they did for their house and kids’ health as a result of that situation (and yet they are so attached to that particular house and could not even contemplate selling it!).
Meeeeee tooooooooo
OK I’ve seen this thread but never listened to the podcast until now. I can tell this is an addictive format he’s got down. I started listening with “our fixed costs are 97% of our income.”
I would love an outside perspective on our financial situation but it’s not sexy enough. We’re not racking up credit card interest or sending our multiple children to school we can’t afford or in denial about our lifestyle. Just plain spending most of our income every month. It would be fun if there were a “big lever” we could think about pulling… I’m not sure there is one. I don’t think we can downsize on housing, for instance, and save much at all.
He’s really cornered an interesting niche!!
We’ve done case studies before on the forum! Generally people are happy to suggest ideas on how you can get the same value for a bit less money, or lifestyle tweaks - its sounds like that might be where your household is at?
A lot of his stories aren’t that sexy though!
I know we all love giving perspectives on a case study if you want to post! In lieu of that, his book “money for couples” was actually really good.
I think one of the first steps would be to find out what your percentages are for fixed costs, guilt free spending, and saving/investing. That’s a really good starting point to find levers. If your fixed costs are really high trying to get creative and lower them even 5-10% can be a game changer.
I posted this in another thread but it compares your spending to others in your zip code and household number (two adults and kids, etc). It can show you where others around you are spending more/less than your family to maybe spark even more ideas.
I think for most of the couples even $100 changes can really add up, it doesn’t have to by major overhauls. This last one is really an anomaly with their income and spending.
Yes! I’m trying to put together a CSP, but it’s hard to do when lots of the data has to come from my husband. I don’t have direct access to the retirement accounts and investments, for example. Doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to know, but it’s a PIA to find out.
I did a CSP with just my stuff–my percentage of the paycheck acting as my net income, and all the expenses I’m responsible for, which is mortgage, bills, and groceries and most other stuff for the household. I learned that my fixed costs are about 88% of my “income.” Obvs our actual household income is higher but it felt on track with how I experience things. That and the over 50% of (my) takehome pay being put to mortgage every month would get me yelled at by Ramit for sure 
Okay, the comments here got me to listen to this episode. This couple makes me froth at the mouth (EAT the RICH) and also sad. Like they’re so caught up in consumerism and “being grateful” (which I really don’t think they are) about what they have, but there are no contributions to charity, no savings, no attempt to really dive into the problem and solve it. Just wow. And also my net worth is much smaller, but I am way more financially stable. That’s just bonkers. Their monthly income is higher than what I ever earned annually. And they can’t figure it out.
WTF, I listened to the whole thing and they just never accepted reality. I see his business taking a sudden dive in the near future and they end up losing one or both of the homes that she is obsessed with keeping and I think I wouldn’t feel a single drop of sympathy. Just wow. And why is she so negative about one of her kids? She kept cursing when she’d mention him and was super willing for him to go to public school, but not the others. And the idea that the kids should take out student loans when the dad makes a million a year… just insane.
This is a great start! It sounds like the next step is your getting the complete picture, like @ginja_ninja said. In our household we often plan ahead to have tricky/involved discussions or chores, like “hey I want to get a better understanding of our savings and spending match our future goals. Thursday night after bedtime, can we start by checking our various savings/retirement accounts together?” Otherwise my spouse felt ambushed if I wanted to get into a big project late at night.
It looks like Oregon is a common-law property and equitable distribution state, and assets accumulated during marriage are typically split equally. You do have every right to know what’s going on there, even if it’s going to be a small inconvenience to set you up with the logins and access.
I usually hear about this in the context of divorce, which hopefully isn’t happening anytime soon, but this is a good point! We’ve talked about it and he has two factor authentication set up or required on some of the accounts, which would make it hard for me to access … there has to be a way around that. When he hits the least bit of administrative friction he really drags his feet.
One option is to sync it all into one app like Empower Personal Capital (free) so you don’t need his 2FA to stay on top of being able to check balances and transactions.
For investment accounts that can have multiple account owners, ideally you should get added as the second account holder. (That also protects you in case something horrific happens to him; you wouldn’t have to go through probate to access those funds.)
For retirement accounts that only have 1 account holder, you can either sync it to a finance tracking app like @flan said, or set up 2FA on your phone (all you have to do is scan the setup code once, and it will spit out the same exact 2FA code as the original device).
A couple nitpicky things about finance apps
Wow I knew that yapping about my situation would yield some good advice. I didn’t even think of these solutions @flan and Ferngully! Thanks.
Isn’t that why we’re on a personal finance forum!?!
We are?!? 